Financially prudent individuals typically engage in extensive planning to develop plans that will aid them in achieving their financial goals. Traditionally, many individuals have entrusted their financial plans to personal financial advisors.
More recently increasing numbers of individuals are relying on computer-based systems that organize their financial assets and liabilities and further provide them with a summary of their financial health. However, these systems are limited by their inability to dynamically analyze the financial goals. These limitations are counterproductive to the user's needs to develop and manage an integrated personal financial plan from an executive decision-making perspective. Furthermore, these systems fail to capture the user's financial intentions and expectations about their future. Also, these systems typically rely on the user to continually update their personal financial data. Furthermore, the user learns very little from the process and remains heavily dependent on the system to provide an accurate summary of their financial health.
Without user executive decision making powers, these financial modeling system are nothing more than expensive financial calculators. In order for an individual user to assume executive decision making power, he requires coaching and guidance. Traditional financial advising is prohibitively expensive for most average investors.
Therefore a financial system is needed that provides automated low cost context sensitive and specific coaching to a user. However, even using such a system, situations arise that require the user to turn to a human advisor and benefit from his experience, and judgment. Therefore, an ideal financial system has to allow the user to communicate with a human advisor in a collaborative environment, when the user sees the need to do so. For most other activities the user needs to be fully supported by an automated coaching system. Such automated coaching system allows the most economical way of using a financial modeling and counseling system.